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Comment by Pengy7 | Hacker News Reader

I grew up Mormon and didn't realize a morning coke was weird until I was 25. It's pretty common out here in Utah.

I thought Mormons weren’t supposed to drink caffeine?

Mormons are not supposed to drink "hot drinks" (i.e., tea and coffee), but some have interpreted this ban to extend to their shared ingredient, caffeine. In 2012, the church explicitly stated that caffeinated soda is allowed, but many Mormons still avoid caffeine.

https://www.npr.org/2016/01/03/461843938/can-mormons-drink-c...

What about cold brews?

And what about hot chocolate on a cold night?

As with any religion it simply depends on what your church/community agrees is right or wrong. In some cases if you were caught drinking cold brew coffee you might be chastised for "undermining god", in other cases you might be lauded for having found the way god clearly intended coffee to be enjoyed. Depends entirely on the whim of the people around you.

I see.

What is the reasoning given for the ban on hot drinks?

In the Doctrine & Covenants, an LDS religious text primarily authored or "revelated" by LDS leadership, there is a section commonly called the Word of Wisdom. The D&C is a companion book often but not always included in distributions of Books of Mormon.

D&C 89:9

9 And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/89?lang=eng

(I know because I was raised LDS, and although I am atheist now, I consider myself culturally Mormon)

Mormons believe that, in the early days of the church, their church's first president and prophet, Joseph Smith, received a revelation from God called the "Word of Wisdom," which basically outlines the substances they should/should not eat or drink. "Hot drinks" [1] was the original wording in the revelation, which modern-day leaders have clarified means strictly "tea and coffee" [2]. This does not include hot chocolate or caffeinated beverages like soda or even energy drinks.

[1] https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/89.9 [2] https://www.lds.org/topics/word-of-wisdom?lang=eng

I wonder if this is regional. The Mormons I know refuse to drink Cola, but are fine with Rooibos tea and other herbal teas.

As I understand it from the outside, it is now official Church doctrine that the particular prohibition that was universally understood to apply to coffee and tea but sometimes interpreted more broadly is limited (in the strict sense) to coffee and tea (the latter, I believe, in the strict sense of drinks made from Camellia sinensis), but that rather recent doctrinal clarification did not erase the fairly strong tradition that the prohibition in application should be treated much more broadly than it's express limits, even if the Church does not specifically dictate the precise bounds, and so the widespread (though not universal) practice of abstention from caffeine as a stimulant prohibited by the broader prohibition in which the specific prohibition now deemed to mean “coffee and tea” continues.

This isn't inherently regional, though variations in the practice probably have some loose correlation with geography.

Actually, there are some studies that hot drinks ( especially tee ) can start a possible throat cancer. The hotness is kind of damaging the cells , which in time if not let to recover, will have a chance to turn into cancerous ones. [1]

[1] https://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20180206/hot-tea-linked-to...

That's pretty misleading.

As the article says: drinking ordinary hot drinks is fine. Drinking scalding hot drinks is harmful.

Reason? We're talking about religion.

best sentence, i've ever read.

There are often historic reasons for rules in religions. Some come out of self-interest (there's only one God -- don't fall for other religions and their habits), some out ofsome form of ethics which derive out of cultural background of the time (don't kill, have only one wife) and practical issues (don't eat pig -- without having a fridge and when being in Messopotamian heat pig meat goes bad quite quickly, leading to health problems, which can be put on God's will due to limited medical understanding)

The question is: Do the reasons still apply today?

To give an additional datapoint for those curious about this (I grew up LDS, father was a bishop, family grew up in Utah but moved to the Midwest):

- Among church congregations, it was common in talks about the Word of Wisdom for someone to bring up modern studies indicating something harmful about coffee/tea, as a sort of justification for the doctrine. (Being nutritional studies, seems you can find studies saying that both X is harmful and X is healthy, for all X.)

- I wonder what the reputation of coffee houses was in early 1800s America. I know that in England in the 1600s-1700s, coffee houses were a sort of salon environment where people gathered to philosophize; a lot of Enlightenment-era philosophies were bolstered by such places. The focus on politics and gossip in such environments made them less-than-reputable among some circles. Perhaps some of the reasoning for the "hot drinks" thing in the WoW was a desire for the membership to avoid such places and ideological influences.

- The main 'reason' to follow the WoW given in my family was that it was an opportunity to show obedience. Essentially, it may seem arbitrary in some cases (though in other cases there's obviously sensible stuff in it), but learning to follow guidance is valuable even if it seems arbitrary.

- Pero (also known as Caro outside the US) is a non-coffee/tea hot drink that is common among some LDS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pero_(beverage) ) My mother drank it a fair amount when I was younger. Herbal teas also seem to be fair game, though I've only ever seen them drunk on an individual basis and not brought to like a ward activity.

- As for the question of iced tea/coffee, that seemed to be discouraged in general. I remember my dad saying that he chose not to drink them because he didn't want to acquire a taste for tea/coffee that would make it harder for him to keep the more set-in-stone guideline.

- Hot chocolate is fine and common on campouts.

- Caffeine was culturally thought of, particularly in Utah/Idaho, as the reasoning behind the coffee/tea restriction, but my devout Utah Mormon grandmother always had her caffeinated Diet Coke every day. Our family would jokingly call it her "vice," but none of us really felt like she was sinning or anything by doing so. The WoW occupies an interesting position of being half a "guideline" or good idea, and half a religious restriction.

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